THE ongoing story of Development Planning in Guyana Today for Tomorrow is contained in the 2022 National Budget that’s been called everything from ‘Transformational’ to ‘Building Back Better’ to ‘Building for the Future!’

All the titles fit, what with the unprecedentedly large allocations for everything from Housing, Agriculture and Infrastructure to Sea Defences and Land Distribution, Free University Education, Better Cell and Internet Services, More Support for Businesses – and now, for a brand-new city.

No Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nation has built a new city in living memory, but over the next five years, Guyana plans to develop over 3,000 house lots on the East Bank of Demerara to lay the basis for a new urban district.

Already named ‘Silica City,’ it’s envisaged to be home to over 50,000 persons within the next 20 years, with Minister of Housing and Water Collin Croal, saying 3,800 acres of state lands within the Soesdyke and Timehri areas have already been identified for the new city conceptualised eight years ago (2013) during the last PPP/C administration.

The new city, he says, “will tackle the issue of non-coastal urban settlement development and the challenges of climate change and rising sea levels,” offering various services and amenities, attracting investment, creating employment and offering alternative urban settlement.

Silica, he added, will be “a vibrant, sustainable, resilient and modern city, in keeping with the Low Carbon Development Strategy, Guyana’s international commitments (Paris Agreement and UNFCC) and Goal 11 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

The Smart City approach, the minister noted, will create “a new city that is compact, pedestrian-oriented, energy-efficient, interconnected and sustainable, comfortable, attractive and secure.”

A preliminary development concept is already completed, he revealed, identifying “residential and non-residential development, transport and infrastructure, sustainable urban drainage, conservation and tourism district, waste management, alternative energy, technological aspects and agriculture.”

All this after the government has already delivered 10,000 house lots and 1,266 land titles in 18 months – unheard of in Guyana and now possible, owing to oil-and-gas earnings and good management of new national resources with equity in mind.

The concept of a ‘Guyana Smart City’ with a name akin to ‘America’s Smartest Valley’ is a useful project hindered by regime change, but now with a deliverable plan for 3,000 house lots on 3,800 acres of land for 50,000 persons over 20 years, it can be expected that all will be done to ensure the project is well advanced by 2025.

Guyana has always been integral to Caribbean development and the time is here when the political directorate is willing to embrace national unity at home and renewed regionalism, with mutual respect and more preparedness and ability to influence change, now that it’s leading the process of collective efforts to breathe more, quicker and better life to the concept of CARICOM yielding the fruitful benefits of being a Single Market and Economy, in which the disparities in size and strength are reduced instead of continuing to expand.

As is often repeated, the ultimate objective is Building for the Future, which will require greater levels of confidence in and support for youth and students than traditionally given and President Ali’s recent engagement with UG students has to be part of a national strategy to tap youthful ideas and skills to develop a conceptual new ‘Youth Economy,’ that aims to turn youthful passions into paychecks.

Every new sector mentioned in the 2022 budget has implications for the future generations alive today, but still very wide open to the attractions of invitations to pursue new lifetime opportunities in nearby lands of milk and honey, where the grass is always green and the gardens white with lillies.

Reorientation of education at tertiary levels to suit the planned Silica satellite city, will also need preparations for the transformed thinking that will come with adjusting to life in a new city, fuelled by both visions and the necessary societal adjustments that will come with the true meaning of the phrase ‘The Internet of Things,’ where nothing is garbage anymore and everything is driven by ideas and the power of positive creativity.

Distance has always been an inhibiting factor, but in today’s interconnected world, Guyana will need to find, develop and deploy the ways and means of overcoming that historical geographic divide using traditional and contemporary, Old School and New Wave, Mainstream and Social Media, combined with all the rich cultural avenues of communication across its 83,000 square miles.

Free education, better health, more homes, unlimited wi-fi and more equitable distribution of oil-and-gas wealth are accompanied by President Irfaan Ali’s call on University of Guyana graduates to prepare to invest time and energy into Guyana’s current and future development, instead of joining the brain drain.

And with Guyana having prime responsibility for promoting closer economic cooperation within CARICOM, it’s certainly a new era unfolding ‘right here’ within the Region, but still largely unknown in most other member states, except amongst Guyanese who’ve interwoven in other Caribbean societies over the past six decades.

The transitional transformations necessary for changing Guyana Today into Guyana Tomorrow can be fast enough for the One Guyana envisaged by this administration to come sooner than later, and the demonstrated will of the current political directorate to engage the next Opposition Leader opens the door for first steps towards a new or renewed approach to the future of bipartisan parliamentary and political cooperation that can also break records and create new and better beginnings for all.

Apart from ensuring necessary levels of parliamentary cooperation for activation of state bodies, the new Opposition Leader will also have the chance to redefine the role of Caribbean opposition parties in situations where cross-party political cooperation, in the national interest and for the common good, will surely yield more than prolonging the automatic mechanical disunity guaranteed by political systems designed and engineered to require and ensure ‘Opposition,’ to mean eternally ‘opposing for opposing sake’ – and treated as a prescribed role.